Kohawk Startup 2018

Elizabeth Hoover de Galvez, Head of Reference, attended Kohawk Startup 2018 to provide research assistance to teams who had less than 24 hours to take an idea and turn it into a prototype and polished 5-minute pitch.  Hoover de Galvez describes her experience below: 

I attended because I wanted to support this great event in whatever way I could.  It was also an opportunity for me to learn more about startup events and to see Coe students in action.  An additional benefit was learning about NewBoCo, which is an incredible resource for Iowa, based in Cedar Rapids, with a mission to accelerate world-changing ideas from Iowa.  I was really impressed with the mentors who volunteered their time to assist students in developing their ideas, including Sumit Nijhawan '93, CEO of Ruffalo Noel Levitz, and David Mehaffy '76.

In the initial pitching round, I participated and gave a one-minute pitch for a product idea (a magnetic back-up camera for older cars which transmits to a phone app).  I discovered soon after I had pitched that this product had already been invented.  That was one of the great things about the event: you could pitch an idea and get instant feedback from the group.  Then, if you decided to go forward with the idea, you had to convince a team (at least one other person) to work with you.  This format provided a chance to view your own idea objectively and to compare it with others' ideas.

As a librarian, the research phase was great.  I chatted with each of the eight teams about some of the questions they were struggling to find the answers to.  I tried to find each group an industry report from our new IBISWorld Database subscription (you'll need to login or be on campus to use it).  Then, in the time I had left, I started looking for other resources--scholarly articles, dissertations, patents, etc.  One day isn't enough time to dig deeply or read thoroughly the published research, so the time constraint really added a new dimension to the work.  The students were also encouraged to complete some original research as part of the process--go out and survey their target consumers, for example.  One group cut up pens to calculate the weight of the plastic being wasted in disposable pens.  Another group surveyed 55 students about the ride-sharing services they currently use.  A third group reached out to Iowa's Secretary of State and got positive feedback about their voting app.  A fourth group 3D printed a prototype of their fitness tracker in the Library's MakerStudio.  It was incredible what they were able to achieve in less than 24 hours. 

I told a couple of groups that I would be first in line as a customer.  I'm really looking forward to having a device on my bike which tracks how many miles I'm riding without me needing to get out my phone to start a tracker.  I'm also excited about a restaurant ratings app which learns from your ratings and will suggest a local restaurant each month where I can get a free meal for a low monthly fee (I get paralyzed by choice and hate wasting time reading reviews, so I usually eat at the same place over and over).  And I'd love an app which simplifies the process of doing research about local candidates before I go to the polls. 

Overall, the inaugural startup weekend was a fantastic success and the Center for Creativity & Careers hopes to offer the event again next year.

More details about the event

On October 26-27, Coe College's Center for Creativity & Careers co-director's Andrea Kann & Barb Tupper organized a 24-hour innovation event "designed to infuse entrepreneurship into the Coe Experience".  The event was lead by David Tominsky '98, the Accelerator Managing Director at NewBoCo (or New Bohemian Innovation Collaborative).  Students were able to attend at no charge thanks to funding from David Mehaffy '76, with support from Coe College Center for Creativity & Careers and the Coe College Alumni Association.  

Friday evening started out with some practice pitches before students, mentors, and audience members had one minute each to pitch real ideas.  Twenty-two ideas were pitched, voted on, and winnowed down to ten ideas.  Participants could then choose a team/idea to work on, which resulted in the formation of eight teams.  

The teams worked together Friday evening and all day Saturday to put a plan into action.  They received coaching from alumni who served as mentors, and research help from a librarian.  They created prototypes and presentations of their products and were encouraged to go out and survey their target market.  Starting at 4 PM on Saturday each team had 5 minutes to pitch to a panel of four judges.

The Teams & their Ideas

Promoting Genius (Dominic Slouca, Yuulin An, Anushree Dhawan, Donald Bell)
A platform for employers to search for employees 

ScoopMe (JT Henry, Brooke Ransom, Joshua Gonzales, Kyle Goranson)
A free ride service for students, by students 

Safe Haven Coffee Shop (Leah Shaffer, Erika Perlewitz, Ha Nguyen, Morgan Hendricks, Karly Arnaiz-Palacios)
A study space to study safe, stress-free, 24-7 

PenLess (Derek Benavidez, Quincy Markham)
A refillable ink pen mail-order service designed to reduce plastic waste from disposable pens. 

New Age Communication (Haley Luna, Matthew Siegel, Jeremy Lewis, Grant Finneman)
Service to facilitate intergenerational communication in the workplace 

PolPlace: Revolutionizing the way you vote local (Sabrina Gallardo, Bailey Finken, Stephen Green, MacKenzie Gustafson, Jalisa Hunter)
A user-friendly app to explore non-partisan information on local elections and candidates 

LOOP or Live Optimized Online Partner (Christian Chiffy, Collin Flynn)
A one-button route/mileage tracker for your bike 

Ratings for You (Ian Slagle, Tomo Takebuchi)
A restaurant review platform

David Tominsky shared that his least favorite part of the weekend was announcing the judges choices for prizes.  He believes that all teams did a great job and just because they aren't named as "winners" doesn't make them losers.

• $1,000 was awarded to ScoopMe
• $500 was awarded to PolPlace

The triage of truth: do not take expert opinion lying down (by Julian Baggini, originally posted on AEON)

Note: As a librarian, I'm very interested in finding the truth in all of the books, articles, and sources which the library provides for our users.  I tell students that scholarly & peer reviewed sources are more trustworthy, but those sources too have flaws and are sometimes so hard to understand that we fall back on reading an experts interpretation of the original research.  But under what circumstances can we trust the experts? 

The article below wrestles with that question.  It was originally posted on AEON and is being republished here under Creative Commons. 

The thirst for knowledge is one of humankind’s noblest appetites. Our desire to sate it, however, sometimes leads us to imbibe falsehoods bottled as truth. The so-called Information Age is too often a Misinformation Age.
 There is so much that we don’t know that giving up on experts would be to overreach our own competency. However, not everyone who claims to be an expert is one, so when we are not experts ourselves, we can decide who counts as an expert only with the help of the opinions of other experts. In other words, we have to choose which experts to trust in order to decide which experts to trust.
Jean-Paul Sartre captured the unavoidable responsibility this places on us when he wrote in Existentialism and Humanism (1945): ‘If you seek counsel – from a priest, for example – you have selected that priest; and at bottom you already knew, more or less, what he would advise.’
The pessimistic interpretation of this is that the appeal to expertise is therefore a charade. Psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated the power of motivated thinking and confirmation bias. People cherry-pick the authorities who support what they already believe. If majority opinion is on their side, they will cite the quantity of evidence behind them. If the majority is against them, they will cite the quality of evidence behind them, pointing out that truth is not a democracy. Authorities are not used to guide us towards the truth but to justify what we already believe the truth to be.
If we are sincerely interested in the truth, however, we can use expert opinion more objectively without either giving up our rational autonomy or giving in to our preconceptions. I’ve developed a simple three-step heuristic I’ve dubbed ‘The Triage of Truth’ which can give us a way of deciding whom to listen to about how the world is. The original meaning of triage is to sort according to quality and the term is most familiar today in the medical context of determining the urgency of treatment required. It’s not infallible; it’s not an alternative to thinking for yourself; but it should at least prevent us making some avoidable mistakes. The triage asks three questions:

• Are there any experts in this field?
• Which kind of expert in this area should I choose?
• Which particular expert is worth listening to here?

In many cases there is no simple yes or no answer. Economic forecasting, for example, admits of only very limited mastery. If you are not religious, on the other hand, then no theologian or priest can be an expert on God’s will.
If there is genuine expertise to be had, the second stage is to ask what kind of expert is trustworthy in that domain, to the degree that the domain allows of expertise at all. In health, for example, there are doctors with standard medical training but also herbalists, homeopaths, chiropractors, reiki healers. If we have good reason to dismiss any of these modalities then we can dismiss any particular practitioner without needing to give them a personal assessment.
Once we have decided that there are groups of experts in a domain, the third stage of triage is to ask which particular ones to trust. In some cases, this is easy enough. Any qualified dentist should be good enough, and we might not have the luxury of picking and choosing anyway. When it comes to builders, however, some are clearly more professional than others.
The trickiest situations are where the domain admits significant differences of opinion. In medicine, for example, there is plenty of genuine expertise but the incomplete state of nutritional science, for example, means that we have to take much advice with a pinch of salt, including that on how big this pinch should be.
This triage is an iterative process in which shifts of opinion at one level lead to shifts at others. Our beliefs form complex holistic webs in which parts support each other. For example, we cannot decide in a vacuum whether there is any expertise to be had in any given domain. We will inevitably take into account the views of experts we already trust. Every new judgment feeds back, altering the next one.
Perhaps the most important principle to apply throughout the triage is the 18th-century Scottish philosopher David Hume’s maxim: ‘A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence.’ Trust in experts always has to be proportionate. If my electrician warns me that touching a wire will electrocute me, I have no reason to doubt her. Any economic forecast, however, should be seen as indicating a probability at best, an educated guest at worst.
Proportionality also means granting only as much authority as is within an expert’s field. When an eminent scientist opines on ethics, for example, she is exceeding her professional scope. The same might be true of a philosopher talking about economics, so be cautious about some of what I have written, too.
This triage gives us a procedure but no algorithm. It does not dispense with the need to make judgments, it simply provides a framework to help us do so. To properly follow Immanuel Kant’s Enlightenment injunction ‘Sapere aude’ (Dare to know), we have to rely on both our own judgment and the judgment of others. We should not confuse thinking for ourselves with thinking by ourselves. Taking expert opinion seriously is not passing the buck. No one can make up your mind for you, unless you make up your mind to let them.
Julian Baggini
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

The Nuremberg Trials: Coe's Connection

In 1917, Benjamin DeWayne Silliman graduated from Coe College. Little did he know his remarkable career was just beginning. 

Silliman served in WWI for a short time before he returned to Cedar Rapids and taught debate at Washington High School. He received a degree in 1923 from the University of Iowa College of Law and then practiced law in Cedar Rapids and instructed at Coe part time.
He served shortly in WWII but was then assigned as Judge Advocate to Justice Robert Jackson and assistted with interrogations and prisoner transfer during the Nuremberg Trials. 
He returned to Cedar Rapids after the trials but brought many related artifacts with him. This included interrogations, prisoner information, trial notes, and even some Nazi passports and military insignia. Silliman left these items to Coe College when he passed away in 1988. To celebrate 100 years from his graduation and 85 years of the library's place on campus, we are happy to announce an exhibition running from February 16, 2017 to March 16, 2017 in the Cone Galleries on the main floor of the library. Come take a look at these items and learn more about Coe's Connection to the historical Nuremberg Trials. 


To learn more about the collection, visit the Silliman Finding Aid or stop by the George T Henry Archives in the lower level of the library. 

Book Suggestion

Paperwhite Narcissus

written by Tom Baker

Looking for a good book about self-discovery? Interested in keeping your brain engaged with a compelling novel during these snowy days? Paperwhite Narcissus might just be the book you’ve been looking for.

In this relatively short novel, we follow Tim as he navigates through his senior year of college. After the death of his mentor, Red Ryder, he tries to deal with her absence while also figuring out who he is. As if that weren’t enough, Tim is stuck deciding whether or not it is worth applying to graduate school, when the fear of being drafted into the military looms around him. This leads him on some strange adventures as he tries to uncover who he really is.

Come check out this book and many others over at the library! We’ve got many new books out on display that are ready to be checked out and read throughout the holiday season.

Native American Heritage Month Book Display

Red Bird Sings

Q. L. Pearce & Gina Capaldi

In honor of Native American Heritage month, Stewart Memorial Library has created a display to showcase some of the wonderful works about, or written by those of Native American decent. Stories both new and old, fictional and non, are out for your viewing pleasure on the main floor and the basement level of the library. 

One of these incredible works, Red Bird Sings written by Q. L. Pearce and illustrated by Gina Capaldi. This captivating picture book tells the tale of Zitkala-Ša, a poet (whose work you can also check out at our display), activist, and musician who is trying to find a way to speak her mind in a world ruled by oppressors. The reader travels with Zitkala-Ša as she grows, learns, and discovers her voice and potential in the world. Her drive to do more for herself, while also standing up for her people is what makes this piece so incredibly moving. And if her bravery and poise wasn’t enough, then the artistic illustrations just might do you in. 

Give yourself a break from all the cramming, writing, and stress of classes to come enjoy the tale of Zitkala-Ša and so many other Native Americans. All books are available for check out on the main floor. Don’t miss out!

-Review by library student worker Samantha Jankowski

Database Updates!

With the new school year here, we wanted to give all Kohawks a brief introduction to some changes in our database list. Find these on our home page under "All Databases"


Check out Birds of North America whether you're an aspiring ornithologist or just simply interested in topics about birds. BNA has some great resources like videos, charts, audio clips, and images to help you get familiar with the friendly fowl around us. 

Find Birds of North America here or in our All Databases list

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We've got a handy resource from ProQuest that can assist you with starting assignments. It's called Research Companion, and it's compiled into a friendly interface that provides videos, tables, and blurbs about different topics, how to evaluate sources, citation, and more. 

Few videos are longer than a couple of minutes, so you'll be on your way to a great assignment in no time!



Find Research Companion here or in our All Databases list

Washington's Birthday & the Colonial Ball

Happy Presidents Day! In her early days, Coe would celebrate George Washington's birthday with an assembly that included a debate and a reception hosted by the women students.

1893 Program

1892 Program

From a March 1, 1906  article in the Cosmos, it was mentioned that the women faculty and students of Williston Hall (the original women's dormitory) held a reception and provided refreshments and even little axes as souvenirs.

1924 Colonial Ball

Colonial Ball dance performance 1950s

Starting in 1911, the day's festivities concluded with the Colonial Ball. This was an even where the women students could show off their dance and athletic skills. They would dress in colonial costumes and perform for their fellow Kohawks and members of the public. Two senior women are honored by being named as George and Martha Washington. This tradition continued for many years, the final ball was held in February of 1961.